The overall project goals are as follows:
"The Robotics Alliance focuses on the technology required to permit inanimate systems (or sub-systems) to perform in a seemingly human fashion. It is a systems-based discipline, combining perception, knowledge, plan/behavior generation and execution in a systematic, controlled fashion to achieve a designated goal. Robotic systems may function with varying degrees of human intervention: they may operate autonomously, under supervisory control, or be teleoperated. . . . [The Alliance] will concentrate efforts on three areas of technology: advanced perception, intelligent architectures/behaviors and human interface/planning techniques."